Lost Girl Found

by Leah Bassoff

  “Do you think it will work?”

  “I was told it would,” Tihou says, and so we try out her plan. We walk all the way to the other check-in point several miles away. When the security guard asks us our names, I quickly choose one of my other ones — Zenitra.Lucky for me I have so many names to spare.

  Unbelievably, the guard accepts my statement as fact and gives me a new identification and ration card. Suddenly, I am not one person, but two.

  When Tihou and I are out of earshot of the guard, we examine our new cards.

  “More food for each of us,” Tihou says. “Once we reach the front of the queue, we will simply circle back and return a second time.”

  “What if the guard in the food line recognizes us?” I ask.

  “Apparently they don’t do anything to stop you. Besides, are you not both Poni and Zenitra?” She slaps me playfully on the arm.

  “Oh, yes. I am all these people at once.” I laugh. Oh, when is the last time I have laughed like this? Tihou laughs, too — laughs until I can see the full length of her throat.

  It is a welcome change to focus on Tihou’s outstretched throat and her surprisingly deep laugh instead of having to look into her eyes, cloudy with dust and loss. Some individuals carry their grief in their shoulders, others in the jutted-out parts of their jaw or lips. Tihou keeps her grief in her chest. The weight of it causes her to lean forward slightly when she walks.

  When Tihou catches me watching her, it is as though she knows what I am thinking.

  “I lost everyone but my sister, Poni. Do you remember my father?”

  “He was a very honored man.”

  “Well, my father was very active in the church. Because of this, the Northerners targeted him. Oh, and they did not just kill him quickly,” Tihou tells me. “They did like this and this.” She makes a cutting motion. “Cut, cut, cut. His ears they did one by one. Then they cut the tip of his nose. I couldn’t watch the rest. After this, my sister and I ran and hid. When we returned, he was lying there dead, all parts of him gone, even his fingers. My mother was dead next to him, though her they did not cut.”

  I can feel my mouth open in horror. “Maybe this is what happened to my father, too.”

  “No,” Tihou says. “Nothing like that. I am sure of it.”

  I look at her, so grateful for her lie.

  — 18 —

  EVERY DAY IS THE SAME in the camps. Find out who has died. Line up for food rations. We cannot provide for ourselves, cannot raise our crops or our cattle here. All we can do is wait with our hands out.

  One morning I get up very early and, carrying both of my ration cards, get in the food line. I am grateful for my two cards, for we have been without food all week, but this also means that I will be in line all day, first as one of my selves and then as another. And then there is the small part of me that knows that taking an extra ration means that someone else may miss theirs. Still, the promise of food banishes all other thoughts from my head.

  Each day that I wait in line, someone drops dead from the heat, from the fatigue, from the futility. Some people make it to the front only to find that all the food is gone.

  This is how it goes.

  On this particular day, as I stand in the food line, I notice the way the sky pinks as the sun comes up. The pink-and-gold beauty of this sunrise is a mockery in the face of so much ugliness, like a woman wearing her printed dress while, around her, everyone else stands naked. My legs ache already, and yet I have so many hours of waiting and standing ahead of me.

  As the morning sun comes to life, she releases her scorch and fury upon those of us waiting in line. The heat has a rhythm to it. It taps me on my exposed arms and legs. It throbs inside my temples. I sway my arms from side to side as if I can magically create a breeze, but, no. The heat presses itself into me like a second skin.

  Some people leave the queue and then return. When they do, they mark their place in line with a particular jerry can or sometimes a stone. They must return quickly, though, or their marker will be moved. Some of the people in line lean on tall sticks. Others squat low because they are too old or too weak.

  Suddenly, there is a stirring within the line. A woman, all ribs except for a pregnant belly, is muttering.

  “If it was just me, but I am with baby. I need food for the baby.” She begins to weave her way forward, trying to move up in the line. “Baby, baby,” she says. The others standing in line gently bump her away, put out elbows or a knee to keep her from cutting into their section. The woman looks dazed, as if she does not know where she is. I motion to her to come stand in line with me. But as I am doing so, some security guards, whose job it is to walk up and down and monitor the food line, catch sight of her. One of them says something to her that makes her clasp her hands together in desperation.

  The next thing I know, the security guards are beating her with a club. They do not hit her hard. It is more like they are swatting at an annoying mosquito or fly. After one or two taps with their club, she topples over and lands on her side, making a flesh-hitting-dirt sound.

  One of the Kenyan guards carries her off, telling whoever is within earshot that he is going to get her some medical attention, but I do not believe this. I am fairly certain that both the woman and the baby are dead. If not now, then soon.

  — 19 —

  IT IS NOT THAT THERE are no doctors here, but there are so few of them to go around. Two trained doctors for 85,000 refugees and a handful of nurses, mostly untrained. Not more than a week after the guards hit the pregnant woman from the food line, a different pregnant woman, one who sleeps near me, starts vomiting loudly enough to wake me. When I go to her, her whole body jolts on the ground as if electricity is traveling through it. Her eyes show only their whites.

  “Hey, hold steady,” I yell. There is a doctor from Médecins sans Frontières who works in our part of the camp, but he does not start working again until the morning, and here it is still the middle of the night. I have nowhere to take this jolting woman.

  I throw myself on top of her, sit astride her round stomach. I try to hold her mouth open so that she can breathe. Her thrashings are so violent that I am afraid she will throw me off, and yet I continue to ride her.

  Finally, her body stills, but her head rolls from side to side. Her eyes fix on me, but they do not see.

  “Wait until morning,” I tell her. “The doctor will come. You will be saved then, but you must wait and hold on.” She seems to hear me, because her eyes move upwards, towards the sky. I see her eyes searching, searching.

  Are they looking for the first ray of light? For God? Her eyes stay like this, peering upwards, looking round and round.

  She does not last until morning, dies with her hand lying atop her bulging belly. As the sun rises, two men carry her off in their bare arms.

  As if seeing another pregnant woman die isn’t enough, on this day my foster mother tells me, “I will be marrying you off soon. There are several men in our camp who have already offered me a decent bride price for you. Now I must simply choose.”

  “What men?” I want to ask, but it doesn’t matter what men. I would sooner die than be married off.

  I must leave Kakuma right away. But where to go?

  Suddenly an idea comes into my head. It is so crazy that I almost laugh aloud. People have told me about the United Nations building that is within walking distance of the main entrance at the other side of the camp. The people who work there are said to be peacekeepers. Maybe they need to know how bad things are in the camp. Perhaps someone in this building will listen to me.

  I know this much.The building is for officials, not displaced people. Still, I cannot help thinking that, if I make my way inside the building, I might find someone who can help me leave Kakuma.

  I rise early, before my foster mother has woken up. At the west entrance of the camp, I do what Tihou taught me
and use my home-brew money to bribe the guards to let me leave and then return. Then I start walking the long way around the camp towards the UN compound as though this is the most natural thing to do.

  People pass me on the road. “Where are you going, eh?” they ask.

  “I am going to the UN building.”

  They shake their heads. “You cannot just go there.” But I ignore them. Let the UN guards turn me away. I will be no worse off.

  Someone mutters, “That building is protected by guards with guns. They will fire at you.”

  Maybe my fatigue has made me bold. Maybe my foolishness will march me straight into death’s mouth. Maybe I no longer care. I keep walking.

  As I walk, I pass a group of Turkana women along the side of the road. Their necks are held straight and tall by huge beaded necklaces, but everything else on them sags into the dirt as they crawl about, trying to find bits of coal to sell.

  I only have to walk an hour to reach the UN compound. The building is surrounded by a tall, jagged barbed-wire fence. The door to the building looks heavy and official. A Kenyan guard stands out front and does, in fact, hold a terrifying rifle at his side. A feeling of panic rises in me.

  Still, I force myself to approach this man.

  “What do you need?” he asks me.

  Tihou taught me how to lie, how to be more than one person if I have to. Today I will be someone new, someone who has a reason to go inside that building.

  “I have a meeting with someone who works here. Manute is inside waiting for me.” Manute is a common name, and I am just praying someone with this same name actually works there.

  The man consults a typed list on a clipboard. “Manute Deng? That one?”

  “Him. Yes.”

  “He didn’t leave word with me.”

  “He must have forgotten. We made this meeting weeks ago, and I have come a long way to get here.”

  I can see this guard sizing me up. He is most likely puzzling over my dirty appearance, but the thought must also cross his mind that no one would be stupid enough — would risk getting shot — to come to the UN building without reason.

  “He is expecting you?”

  “Yes. I am actually a bit late to meet him,” I reply. The guard pats me down to make sure I am not carrying weapons, as though I could conceal anything inside my thin dress.

  “You may go in, and I will phone Manute Deng to let him know you’re on your way.”

  I nod. This man will be quite confused by this phone call, but at least I will get inside the building.

  The UN building is like an entire city inside. The first thing I feel is actual air-conditioning. I have heard of this fake air, but have never experienced it before. The cold air seems to come from all directions, making me shiver. The floors are not made of dirt but are shiny and solid. I am scared because I do not know where to go inside this compound, but I start walking. Walk as if you are going somewhere, and maybe no one will question you.

  A white woman approaches me, and I feel my heart pound. White skin used to make me nervous when I was very young, until I got to know a few of the missionaries who passed through our village. This woman smiles and asks if she can help me. She speaks a strange mix of English and Kiswahili, which I am somehow able to follow.

  Her hair is long and yellowy, but her outfit of trousers and a blouse is as gray as stone. Her black shoes make a clicking noise on the hard floor, unlike my own bare feet.

  At any moment, guards may find me and throw me out, and so I begin to talk, to tell this woman everything. About how I have only recently seen two pregnant women die before my eyes, about how my foster mother is arranging a marriage for me, about how I want to go to school.

  The woman says, “I see…” several times as I talk. She does not try to stop me until I am finished speaking. Instead she says, “I know how bad it is in the camps. Appalling, really. That’s why I came to work here. To try to help.” Then she adds, “Let me take you to lunch. You can tell me more.”

  Suddenly, her white hand is on my arm, and she is leading me down the hallway. Perhaps she will have me arrested, yet I have nothing to do but walk with her. As we go, the woman points out the various rooms of the building.

  “This is the squash court. This is the swimming pool.” She speaks to me in a breezy way, as if I am an official visitor and not a half-dead refugee from the camp. She does not seem to think that having a big swimming pool here inside the building, here within the middle of the desert, is unusual.

  After living in a dust bowl, after watching people fall down and die of dehydration, to see this enormous pool full of clean, clear water is too much.

  Oh, that I could jump into the swimming pool, surround myself with water, drink it. Yet the workers in this building use this pool for playing and floating? How did they manage to transport all of this water into the swimming pool? Did they drive past all of the dying refugees in the camps with their water tanks?

  And what to think of this UN woman? She is kind enough to listen to me, has not had me arrested as of yet. I want to prostrate myself to her and, at the same time, claw her eyes out.

  Is this fair for you to be living like this — cold air coming at you from all sides — while right outside people are being cooked alive? What if the pregnant woman had found her way here? Would she be alive now?

  Being in the UN is like visiting another world, and yet it is so very close to the camp, so close you can walk right to it.

  “Are you okay?” she asks me.

  “Yes. Thank you.” I learned from my mother how to bend my head and hide the emotions of my face.

  “At least we can get one good meal into you. Not that this cafeteria food is so good, mind you,” she laughs. “All of us who work here joke about how bad the food is.” I try to laugh, but the horror of it is almost too much to bear.

  As though she can read my thoughts, the woman is suddenly talking again. “I want to help. Really I do. I mean, I joined the UN to help people, to help Africa. I thought about going to Mozambique. They had a position open there, and there are beautiful beaches, but when I heard about this whole mess in Sudan, I said, no, let me go there, where I can really be of some use. But you know how it is. I mean, there are so many people who are dying all the time that you just feel too helpless in the face of it all. How do you stop all of these killings? All of this starvation?”

  I know I lied to get into this building, that this woman is allowing me to stay by her good graces alone, but what does she want me to say? That she is fighting for a noble cause? Cleaning up our mess for us? That she is one of the few Westerners who bothers to care? Yes, I know she is a good person and means well. Yet, dear lady, how can you really see what is going on outside from in here? From this building with its swimming pool and fake air?

  “Do you ever go inside the camp?” I ask. I am hoping that it is a general enough question not to cause offense.

  “I do, although the UN is very concerned for our safety and limits our mobility. None of the aid organizations are allowed to stay in the camp past five in the evening because of all of the violence. It’s horrible there. All the suffering. Everyone wanting me to save them. People think I’m a doctor, that I might have medicine, but I don’t. I’m here as an administrator. Back home in the US people have barely even heard of your civil war.”

  The way she says this sounds odd to my ears. It sounds as though she thinks the war belongs to me personally.

  “We send reports back, but officials there are squabbling over whether or not to classify this situation as genocide. They should just help, rather than worrying about numbers.” Then she changes the topic. “You wanted lunch, right?”

  As we enter the cafeteria, my mind can barely take in the sight of all the food. There is fruit arranged in pyramids, as if the food itself is a decoration. There are slices of meat cut thinly and rolled up as
if they are on display, and there is an enormous pot of hot beef stew with huge chunks of vegetables.

  As if this is not enough, there are actual bins that dispense cereal, cold sodas and bottles of water.

  How many people could this food save? I can feel the saliva fill my mouth, and I imagine sticking my face straight into the bowl of stew, slurping it up like a cow. Yet I remember hearing how people can become deathly ill from eating too much after having nothing for so long. I know I must be careful, that my stomach is now a shrunken fruit pit.

  The UN woman urges me on. “You should eat what you can. I know they barely give you anything inside the camp.”

  I point to a coffee cup. “This is how much grains we get. Sometimes it has to last a week.” I try to eat with some grace, but I am aware that I am shoving rolls of meat into my mouth before I have time to chew.

  The woman does not seem to notice.

  “Poni,” she finally says. I realize I must have told her my name in the beginning, and she has remembered it, even though I never asked for hers. “I appreciate having the opportunity to talk with you.” The way she talks, she makes it sound as though I have somehow done her a favor. She doesn’t know or care that I lied my way into this building, that some man named Manute is most likely searching the halls for me.

  “Usually I’m not allowed to help individual people,” the UN woman says. “I’m not very high up here. Plus, you know how it is. Help one person, and suddenly you have a line of a hundred standing with their hands out. But I like you. I can tell you’re really smart.”

  How does she know this about me?

  “Have you ever heard of Sister Hannah?” she continues.

  I shake my head.

  “She’s a nun who lives just outside Nairobi. She is known to help girls. Tell me, where do you live inside the camp?”